Movatterモバイル変換

[0]ホーム
URL:

Jump to content
WiktionaryThe Free Dictionary
Search

beyond the pale

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

[edit]
WOTD – 24 March 2022

Etymology

[edit]

Frombeyond +the +pale(“wooden stake, picket; fence made from wooden stakes, palisade; bounds, limits; territory or defensive area within a specific boundary or under a given jurisdiction”), suggesting that anything outside an authority’s jurisdiction is uncivilized. According to theOxford English Dictionary, there is insufficient evidence that the term originally referred to the EnglishPale, the part of Ireland directly under the control of the English government in the Late Middle Ages; or to thePale of Settlement (Russian:Черта́осе́длости(Čertá osédlosti)) which existed from 1791 to 1917 in theRussian Empire, where Jewish people were mostly relegated to living. The first attestation of this English translation of the Russian in theOED is 1890.[1] TheGoogle Ngram Viewer shows a fivefold increase in the use of the expression from 1801 to 1864.[2]

Pronunciation

[edit]

Prepositional phrase

[edit]

beyondthepale

  1. (idiomatic) Of aperson or theirbehaviour:outside thebounds of what isacceptable, orregarded asgoodjudgment,morality,ethics, etc.
    Synonyms:out of bounds,off-limits,off the reservation,over the line
    Antonym:within the pale
    Coordinate term:over the edge
    • 1900,Arthur Conan Doyle,The Great Boer War,page409:
      The very date which put thembeyond the pale as belligerents was that which they seem to have chosen in order to prove what active and valiant soldiers they still remained.
    • 1945,John Steinbeck,Cannery Row, page105:
      Socially Mack and the boys werebeyond the pale. Sam Malloy didn't speak to them as they went by the boiler. They drew into themselves and no one could foresee how they would come out of the cloud. For there are two possible reactions to social ostracism - either a man emerges determined to be better, purer, and kindlier or he goes bad, challenges the world and does even worse things. This last is by far the commonest reaction to stigma.
    • 1951,William O. Douglas, quoted in2013, Whitney Strub,Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right,page 43,
      “The teaching of methods of terror and other seditious conduct should bebeyond the pale,” he continued, adding as an afterthought, “along with obscenity and immorality.”
    • 2012, Patricia Hewitt, “3: The Start of Labour's Long March:1985-1992”, in Dennis Kavanagh, editor,Philip Gould: An Unfinished Life,page42:
      For most British voters – the people whom Labour claimed to represent – Labour was, quite simply, ‘beyond the pale’.
  2. Used other than as an idiom; generally followed byof:beyond theextent orlimits.
    Synonyms:out of bounds,off-limits
    Antonym:within the pale
    • 1812, Edward William Grinfield,The Nature and Extent of the Christian Dispensation with Reference to the Salvability of the Heathen,page35:
      Are they to be placed like devilsbeyond the pale of all human charities, and to be denied all kindly and benevolent offices?
    • 2000, Raechelle Rubinstein,Beyond the Realm of the Senses: The Balinese Ritual of Kakawin Composition,page103:
      […]but he was essentially a lone traveller in areasbeyond the pale of human society.
    • 2012, David M. Emmons,Beyond the American Pale: The Irish in the West, 1845-1910,page 4:
      That they had evinced no desire to be Britons, and had made manifest their aversion by holding tenaciously to their Catholicism, only confirmed the wisdom of their consignmentbeyond the pale.
    • 2012, Tony Kushner, Kenneth Lunn,The Politics of Marginality: Race, the Radical Right and Minorities in Twentieth Century Britain,page143:
      In addition it calls into question the common assumption that the holocaust destroyed British anti-Semitism or at least pushed itbeyond the pale of respectability.
    • 2013, Heidi Ravven,The Self Beyond Itself: An Alternative History of Ethics, the New Brain Sciences, and the Myth of Free Will,unnumbered page:
      We can even discern the outlines of the hidden and disguised religious character of the argument, for the move that Broad makes is not so much to debate Spinoza but to put himbeyond the pale of acceptable, legitimate philosophical opinion.

Translations

[edit]
of a person or their behaviour: outside the bounds of what is acceptable, or regarded as good judgment, morality, etc.

References

[edit]
  1. ^“beyond the pale” under “pale,n.1”, inOED OnlinePaid subscription required⁠, Oxford:Oxford University Press, December 2021;“beyond the pale,phrase”, inLexico,Dictionary.com;Oxford University Press,2019–2022.
  2. ^“beyond the pale”, inGoogle Books Ngram Viewer

Further reading

[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=beyond_the_pale&oldid=86072595"
Categories:
Hidden categories:
[8]ページ先頭
©2009-2025 Movatter.jp